January 28, 2026 - fundinmentalfundinmental

MY REVIEW

I am familiar with the authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, but have not read any of their work recently, so it was a great surprise to see Pendergast: The Beginning up for grabs on NetGalley. I get an introduction to Pendergast through the experience of his first case. And what a whopper of a case it is.

FBI Special Agent Dwight Chambers’ life has fallen into a shamble, and, on top of that, he is assigned a new agent as his partner, A X L Pendergast. When Pendergast pulls a stunt, they are told to go work on something and stay away from the office. Pendergast loves the opportunity to work on a cold case that caught his attention. Neither him nor Chambers could have foreseen what was to come…and I wasn’t either.

Pendergast is a quirky character, and I love him. He sees more than meets the eye, and he will need every bit of his inner sight to battle evil. Why would a person as rich as Pendergast, want to be an FBI agent? You will need to read the story to find out why. It will test all his skills.

Chambers was a puzzle to me and I will solve it…maybe. Still, at the end, I am not sure what to make of him. Is he clueless, gullible?

The villains are awesome, and I mean that in the worst possible way. Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have created some of the most intriguing characters. None of them are perfect in any way.

Wow. I knew some things before they happened. I have read so many books, it is hard to totally surprise me, but that ending. Fantastic. I think I have read some of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s work, but I will definitely be reading more, now that he is in my sights.

Animated Animals. Pictures, Images and Photos — 4 Stars

AMAZON SYNOPSIS

From the #1 New York Times bestselling duo Preston and Child comes the Agent Pendergast origin story—a golden opportunity for longtime fans and new readers to learn about Agent Pendergast’s strange and shocking first case.

It only took six months for the life of Special Agent Dwight Chambers to crumble around him. First, he lost his partner, and then, tragically, his wife. Returning to work at the New Orleans Field Office, Chambers is dismayed to find himself saddled with mentoring a brand new FBI agent—a certain A. X. L. Pendergast. As Chambers tries to pull himself together, his enigmatic and exasperating junior partner pulls an outrageous stunt that gets both of them suspended.

Pendergast welcomes the banishment, because it gives him the opportunity to investigate a peculiar murder in Mississippi that has captured his fancy. Chambers grudgingly goes along. What starts off as a whimsical quest swiftly turns into a terrifying pursuit, as Chambers and Pendergast uncover a string of grisly, ritualistic killings that defy any known serial killer profile.

Thanks in large part to Pendergast’s brilliance and unorthodox methods, they solve the case and find the killer… and that is when the true horror begins.

Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller
380 pages, Kindle Edition
Expected publication January 27, 2026 by Grand Central Publishing
Series: Pendergast #23

ABOUT DOUGLAS PRESTON

Douglas Preston is the author of forty books, both fiction and nonfiction, thirty-two of which have been New York Times bestsellers, with several reaching the number 1 position. He has worked as an editor at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and taught nonfiction writing at Princeton University. His first novel, RELIC, co-authored with Lincoln Child, was made into a movie by Paramount Pictures, which launched the famed Pendergast series of novels. His recent nonfiction book, THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE, is also in production as a major television series from Apple. His latest nonfiction book, THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD, tells the true story of the discovery of a prehistoric city in an unexplored valley deep in the Honduran jungle. In addition to books, Preston writes about archaeology and paleontology for the New Yorker, National Geographic, and Smithsonian magazines. He is the recipient of numerous writing awards in the US and Europe, including a shared Edgar Award and an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Pomona College. From 2019 to 2023 he served as president of the Authors Guild, the nation’s oldest and largest association of authors and journalists. Website: http://www.prestonchild.com/

ABOUT LINCOLN CHILD

Lincoln Child was born in Westport, Connecticut, which he still calls his hometown (despite the fact that he left the place before he reached his first birthday and now only goes back for weekends).

Lincoln seemed to have acquired an interest in writing as early as second grade, when he wrote a short story entitled Bumble the Elephant (now believed by scholars to be lost). Along with two dozen short stories composed during his youth, he wrote a science-fiction novel in tenth grade called Second Son of Daedalus and a shamelessly Tolkeinesque fantasy in twelfth grade titled The Darkness to the North (left unfinished at 400 manuscript pages). Both are exquisitely embarrassing to read today and are kept under lock and key by the author.

After a childhood that is of interest only to himself, Lincoln graduated from Carleton College (huh?) in Northfield, Minnesota, majoring in English. Discovering a fascination for words, and their habit of turning up in so many books, he made his way to New York in the summer of 1979, intent on finding a job in publishing. He was lucky enough to secure a position as editorial assistant at St. Martin’s Press.

Over the next several years, he clawed his way up the editorial hierarchy, moving to assistant editor to associate editor before becoming a full editor in 1984. While at St. Martin’s, he was associated with the work of many authors, including that of James Herriot and M. M. Kaye. He edited well over a hundred books–with titles as diverse as The Notation of Western Music and Hitler’s Rocket Sites–but focused primarily on American and English popular fiction.

While at St. Martin’s, Lincoln assembled several collections of ghost and horror stories, beginning with the hardcover collections Dark Company (1984) and Dark Banquet (1985). Later, when he founded the company’s mass-market horror division, he edited three more collections of ghost stories, Tales of the Dark 1-3.

In 1987, Lincoln left trade publishing to work at MetLife. In a rather sudden transition, he went from editing manuscripts, speaking at sales conferences, and wining/dining agents to doing highly technical programming and systems analysis. Though the switch might seem bizarre, Lincoln was a propeller-head from a very early age, and his extensive programming experience dates back to high school, when he worked with DEC minis and the now-prehistoric IBM 1620, so antique it actually had an electric typewriter mounted into its front panel. Away from the world of publishing, Lincoln’s own nascent interests in writing returned. While at MetLife, Relic was published, and within a few years Lincoln had left the company to write full time. He now lives in New Jersey (under protest–just kidding) with his wife and daughter.

A dilettante by natural inclination, Lincoln’s interests include: pre-1950s literature and poetry; post-1950s popular fiction; playing the piano, various MIDI instruments, and the 5-string banjo; English and American history; motorcycles; architecture; classical music, early jazz, blues, and R&B; exotic parrots; esoteric programming languages; mountain hiking; bow ties; Italian suits; fedoras; archaeology; and multiplayer deathmatching. Website:
http://lincolnchild.com/